Having #DragonCon Withdrawals: Review of Day 1 - Friday!



Hey guys! It's been about 3 weeks since DragonCon ended and I've been having some serious withdrawals the whole time. Like, I have been sad and thinking about my time there, so I think a way to not be sad is to relive it a little bit and share it with you guys here.

So DragonCon is really 5 days, this year it started Thursday, August 29th and it ran through Monday, September 2nd (Labor Day). It's 5 days of continuous, non-stop on going fun! I am talking that from the moment the con starts on Thursdays, it basically doesn't close until Monday afternoon. Yes, there are no more panels and the vendors close shop, but the hotel lobbies have parties going on non-stop all night until the sun comes back up. I wasn't able to attend Thursday, but I was there all the rest of the days.

One of my favorite parts of going to the con alone (yes, I went completely alone, no company) was that I was able to talk to a bunch of people and make new friends -and I love making new friends! Also, I was free to do whatever I wanted, when I wanted it, and how I wanted it. 

Lastly, it is no secret I am a big fangirl, so I am going to confess right here and right now that I had 3 very big motives to attend DragonCon (aside from it being on bucket list): #1 Zachary Levi (because I will never tire of him AND he had panels EVERY day except Monday), #2 Freema Agyeman, and #3 Catherine Tate. Now that you know this, you will understand my review for each day of the con:

Day 1: Friday, August 30th. 

I missed the David Tennant penal because I woke up a little too late (my flight the night before came in late and I ended up going to bed at like 2am) and with DT if you aren't there at least 3 hours before, you are not getting in. I even heard that there were people in line for his panel at 7:30AM, when the con wasn't opening until 9AM, AND his panel didn't start until 11:30AM! So there is no way I was ever getting in! Anyway, I get in and got my badge and went straight to the Zachary Levi panel (it was supposed to be a Shazam panel with him, Asher Angel, and Cooper Andrews but Asher ended up cancelling the con and Cooper had to cancel Friday's appearance due to a last minute shooting scheduling conflict he had). His panel started at 4PM, due to the really bad Atlanta traffic I had no idea they had so my Lyft took a long time to take me there, and all that jazz, when I got in line for him at 2PM or so, I was "late" and there was already a big line. 

I make it to Zachary Levi's (first out of 3) panel and I was so, so excited to see him again! He was, of course, as charming and amazing and loving and funny as always. Only bad thing is that he hated that he had a table in front because he doesn't like anything on the stage when he is on, no moderators, nothing. As you can see in the pictures below, he HAS to get up lol.

Please forgive the terrible lighting in the panel pictures, but at the very last minute I was not able to get a pro camera with so much going on in Miami with the hurricane that was supposed to come (and never came) plus work plus getting ready for the trip, so I had rely on my iPhone camera. But, honestly, it's the pictures from the panels that look terrible because of the lighting combined with the background that made them so terrible. I tried tweaking them as best I could, so here goes nothing:

Why is he so cute?

He got tired of sitting down (he's just too hyper) and was trying to be silly

After his panel, I went walking around and trying to figure this con out, since it's just SO different from all the other cons I've been to given that it's spread out into 5 different hotels and panels are held between 2-3 of them, and the vendors are in another one, and the autographs and photo-ops are in the same building as some of the panels. So I wanted to see where everything was and I ended up finding the autograph booth area. This is where saw that Dan Fogler was there, hanging out and I absolutely love him in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them franchise (Potterhead over here!) and I had missed him already in Orlando MegaCon back in May (because I was at Zachary's panel...sorry not sorry), so I approached him. He had no line, which made it faster for me to just walk up to him and have a bit of a conversation with him. I told him I wanted a selfie (paid by dues for such a service) and then he noticed my backpack, which is Hufflepuff themed. He said he liked it and I asked him if he was a fellow Hufflepuff. He says, "Hell yeah!" and proceeds to look at all the patches and pins on my backpack and commenting on how cool he thinks it is. It made me very happy to have a fellow Hufflepuff compliment my backpack. Then we finally got our amazing pic together.

His lovely assistant was kind enough to document the whole interaction, which resulted in a total of 7 pictures, but I won't bore you with so many. Just two of them:


He seriously was just so nice and I think we became BFFs

After this, there wasn't much to do and I also didn't have much time before my photo-op with Zac that was coming up, so I made my way to that area and waited in the very long line to get my photo-op with Zac. Originally, I had thought about cosplaying as Chuck for this pic with him, but after watching (and becoming obsessed with) the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and always wanting an excuse to wear anything 50s inspired, I went that route. I have a black dress that is 50s style, I already had the long black silk gloves, and I only needed to get the pearls, which I did from Amazon. So, when I approached Zac (3rd time meeting him, still melt into a puddle and my heart pounds loudly in my chest as I did so), we fist bump -which is how he always greets people -and ask him if we could do a 50s pose. He looks down at me (he's 6'4" people! And I'm 5'2", only this time I wore heels, but barely makes a difference with him) and asks, "What's a 50s pose?" So I explain to him that they used to mostly have the woman loop their hand around the man's arm and he said "of course!" and I say to him (in a very non-50s way): "Dude, I'm the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and he smiles widely and says to me, "Nice, nice, I love it" and fist bumps me. We then pose for the picture and the result was beyond my wildest dreams guys! Because I was happy he agreed to the pose, but I didn't know he was going to go all out with the pose and include that famous Flynn Ryder smolder that does melt all our little fangirl hearts:


I was so in love with that picture that when I picked it up from the printing area, I wanted to scream from joy!

After this, there were no more panels or events that I attended (there were plenty of parties, but I don't party and I was tired), so that was the end of my day 1 of DragonCon.

But, before I end today's recap, let me show you the few very cool cosplays I got the opportunity to photograph that day (between walking around and the lines and the amount of people present, it was hard to get many cosplay pictures):





I know there wasn't much for a day in a con, but I hope you have enjoyed the Zachary Levi spamming ;)


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